But legends of this kind, though not without a very real beauty, must not

blind us to the fact that the period of Catholic ascendancy was on the

whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind. The

energies of Christendom were diverted from all useful and progressive

studies, and were wholly expended on theological disquisitions. A crowd of

superstitions, attributed to infallible wisdom, barred the path of

knowledge, and the charge of magic, or the charge of heresy, crushed every

bold enquiry in the sphere of physical nature or of opinions. Above all,

the conditions of true enquiry had been cursed by the Church. A blind

unquestioning credulity was inculcated as the first of duties, and the

habit of doubt, the impartiality of a suspended judgment, the desire to

hear both sides of a disputed question, and to emancipate the judgment

from unreasoning prejudice, were all in consequence condemned. The belief

in the guilt of error and doubt became universal, and that belief may be

confidently pronounced to be the most pernicious superstition that has

ever been accredited among mankind. Mistaken facts are rectified by

enquiry. Mistaken methods of research, though far more inveterate, are

gradually altered; but the spirit that shrinks from enquiry as sinful, and

deems a state of doubt a state of guilt, is the most enduring disease that

can afflict the mind of man. Not till the education of Europe passed from

the monasteries to the universities, not till Mohammedan science, and

classical free-thought, and industrial independence broke the sceptre of

the Church, did the intellectual revival of Europe begin.

I am aware that so strong a statement of the intellectual darkness of the

middle ages is likely to encounter opposition from many quarters. The

blindness which the philosophers of the eighteenth century manifested to

their better side has produced a reaction which has led many to an

opposite, and, I believe, far more erroneous extreme. Some have become

eulogists of the period, through love of its distinctive theological

doctrines, and others through archæological enthusiasm, while a very

pretentious and dogmatic, but, I think, sometimes superficial, school of

writers, who loudly boast themselves the regenerators of history, and

treat with supreme contempt all the varieties of theological opinion, are

accustomed, partly through a very shallow historical optimism which

scarcely admits the possibility of retrogression, and partly through

sympathy with the despotic character of Catholicism, to extol the mediæval

society in the most extravagant terms. Without entering into a lengthy

examination of this subject, I may be permitted to indicate shortly two or

three fallacies which are continually displayed in their appreciations.

It is an undoubted truth that, for a considerable period, almost all the

knowledge of Europe was included in the monasteries, and from this it is

continually inferred that, had these institutions not existed, knowledge

would have been absolutely extinguished. But such a conclusion I conceive

to be altogether untrue. During the period of the Pagan empire,

intellectual life had been diffused over a vast portion of the globe.

Egypt and Asia Minor had become great centres of civilisation. Greece was

still a land of learning. Spain, Gaul, and even Britain,(432) were full of

libraries and teachers. The schools of Narbonne, Arles, Bordeaux,

Toulouse, Lyons, Marseilles, Poitiers, and Trèves were already famous. The

Christian emperor Gratian, in A.D. 376, carried out in Gaul a system

similar to that which had already, under the Antonines, been pursued in

Italy, ordaining that teachers should be supported by the State in every

leading city.(433) To suppose that Latin literature, having been so widely

diffused, could have totally perished, or that all interest in it could

have permanently ceased, even under the extremely unfavourable

circumstances that followed the downfall of the Roman Empire and the

Mohammedan invasions, is, I conceive, absurd. If Catholicism had never

existed, the human mind would have sought other spheres for its

development, and at least a part of the treasures of antiquity would have

been preserved in other ways. The monasteries, as corporations of peaceful

men protected from the incursions of the barbarians, became very naturally

the reservoirs to which the streams of literature flowed; but much of what

they are represented as creating, they had in reality only attracted. The

inviolable sanctity which they secured rendered them invaluable

receptacles of ancient learning in a period of anarchy and perpetual war,

and the industry of the monks in transcribing, probably more than

counterbalanced their industry in effacing, the classical writings. The

ecclesiastical unity of Christendom was also of extreme importance in

rendering possible a general interchange of ideas. Whether these services

outweighed the intellectual evils resulting from the complete diversion of

the human mind from all secular learning, and from the persistent

inculcation, as a matter of duty, of that habit of abject credulity which

it is the first task of the intellectual reformer to eradicate, may be

reasonably doubted.

It is not unfrequent, again, to hear the preceding fallacy stated in a

somewhat different form. We are reminded that almost all the men of genius

during several centuries were great theologians, and we are asked to

conceive the more than Egyptian darkness that would have prevailed had the

Catholic theology which produced them not existed. This judgment resembles

that of the prisoner in a famous passage of Cicero, who, having spent his

entire life in a dark dungeon, and knowing the light of day only from a

single ray which passed through a fissure in the wall, inferred that if

the wall were removed, as the fissure would no longer exist, all light

would be excluded. Mediæval Catholicism discouraged and suppressed in

every way secular studies, while it conferred a monopoly of wealth and

honour and power upon the distinguished theologian. Very naturally,

therefore, it attracted into the path of theology the genius that would

have existed without it, but would under other circumstances have been

displayed in other forms.

It is not to be inferred, however, from this, that mediæval Catholicism

had not, in the sphere of intellect, any real creative power. A great

moral or religious enthusiasm always evokes a certain amount of genius

that would not otherwise have existed, or at least been displayed, and the

monasteries were peculiarly fitted to develop certain casts of mind, which

in no other sphere could have so perfectly expanded. The great writings of

St. Thomas Aquinas(434) and his followers, and, in more modern times, the

massive and conscientious erudition of the Benedictines, will always make

certain periods of the monastic history venerable to the scholar. But,

when we remember that during many centuries nearly every one possessing

any literary taste or talents became a monk, when we recollect that these

monks were familiar with the language, and might easily have been familiar

with the noble literature, of ancient Rome, and when we also consider the

mode of their life, which would seem, from its freedom from care, and from

the very monotony of its routine, peculiarly calculated to impel them to

study, we can hardly fail to wonder how very little of any real value they

added, for so long a period, to the knowledge of mankind. It is indeed a

remarkable fact that, even in the ages when the Catholic ascendancy was

most perfect, some of the greatest achievements were either opposed or

simply external to ecclesiastical influence. Roger Bacon, having been a

monk, is frequently spoken of as a creature of Catholic teaching. But

there never was a more striking instance of the force of a great genius in

resisting the tendencies of his age. At a time when physical science was

continually neglected, discouraged, or condemned, at a time when all the

great prizes of the world were open to men who pursued a very different

course, Bacon applied himself with transcendent genius to the study of

nature. Fourteen years of his life were spent in prison, and when he died

his name was blasted as a magician. The mediæval laboratories were chiefly

due to the pursuit of alchemy, or to Mohammedan encouragement. The

inventions of the mariner’s compass, of gunpowder, and of rag paper were

all, indeed, of extreme importance; but no part of the credit of them

belongs to the monks. Their origin is involved in much obscurity, but it

is almost certain that the last two, at all events, were first employed in

Europe by the Mohammedans of Spain. Cotton paper was in use among these as

early as 1009. Among the Christian nations it appears to have been unknown

till late in the thirteenth century. The first instance of the employment

of artillery among Christian nations was at the battle of Crecy, but the

knowledge of gunpowder among them has been traced back as far as 1338.

There is abundant evidence, however, of its employment in Spain by

Mohammedans in several sieges in the thirteenth century, and even in a

battle between the Moors of Seville and those of Tunis at the end of the

eleventh century.(435) In invention, indeed, as well as in original

research, the mediæval monasteries were singularly barren. They cultivated

formal logic to great perfection. They produced many patient and

laborious, though, for the most part, wholly uncritical scholars, and many

philosophers who, having assumed their premises with unfaltering faith,

reasoned from them with admirable subtlety; but they taught men to regard

the sacrifice of secular learning as a noble thing; they impressed upon

them a theory of the habitual government of the universe, which is

absolutely untrue; and they diffused, wherever their influence extended,

habits of credulity and intolerance that are the most deadly poisons to

the human mind.

It is, again, very frequently observed among the more philosophic

eulogists of the mediæval period, that although the Catholic Church is a

trammel and an obstacle to the progress of civilised nations, although it

would be scarcely possible to exaggerate the misery her persecuting spirit

caused, when the human mind had outstripped her teaching; yet there was a

time when she was greatly in advance of the age, and the complete and

absolute ascendancy she then exercised was intellectually eminently

beneficial. That there is much truth in this view, I have myself

repeatedly maintained. But when men proceed to isolate the former period,

and to make it the theme of unqualified eulogy, they fall, I think, into a

grave error. The evils that sprang from the later period of Catholic

ascendancy were not an accident or a perversion, but a normal and

necessary consequence of the previous despotism. The principles which were

imposed on the mediæval world, and which were the conditions of so much of

its distinctive excellence, were of such a nature that they claimed to be

final, and could not possibly be discarded without a struggle and a

convulsion. We must estimate the influence of these principles considered

as a whole, and during the entire period of their operation. There are

some poisons which, before they kill men, allay pain and diffuse a

soothing sensation through the frame. We may recognise the hour of

enjoyment they procure, but we must not separate it from the price at

which it is purchased.

The extremely unfavourable influence the Catholic Church long exercised

upon intellectual development had important moral consequences. Although

moral progress does not necessarily depend upon intellectual progress it

is materially affected by it, intellectual activity being the most

important element in the growth of that great and complex organism which

we call civilisation. The mediæval credulity had also a more direct moral

influence in producing that indifference to truth, which is the most

repulsive feature of so many Catholic writings. The very large part that

must be assigned to deliberate forgeries in the early apologetic

literature of the Church we have already seen; and no impartial reader

can, I think, investigate the innumerable grotesque and lying legends

that, during the whole course of the Middle Ages, were deliberately palmed

upon mankind as undoubted facts, can follow the histories of the false

decretals, and the discussions that were connected with them, or can

observe the complete and absolute incapacity most Catholic historians have

displayed, of conceiving any good thing in the ranks of their opponents,

or of stating with common fairness any consideration that can tell against

their cause, without acknowledging how serious and how inveterate has been

the evil. There have, no doubt, been many noble individual exceptions. Yet

it is, I believe, difficult to exaggerate the extent to which this moral

defect exists in most of the ancient and very much of the modern

literature of Catholicism. It is this which makes it so unspeakably

repulsive to all independent and impartial thinkers, and has led a great

German historian(436) to declare, with much bitterness, that the phrase

Christian veracity deserves to rank with the phrase Punic faith. But this

absolute indifference to truth whenever falsehood could subserve the

interests of the Church is perfectly explicable, and was found in

multitudes who, in other respects, exhibited the noblest virtue. An age

which has ceased to value impartiality of judgment will soon cease to

value accuracy of statement; and when credulity is inculcated as a virtue,

falsehood will not long be stigmatised as a vice. When, too, men are

firmly convinced that salvation can only be found within their Church, and

that their Church can absolve from all guilt, they will speedily conclude

that nothing can possibly be wrong which is beneficial to it. They

exchange the love of truth for what they call the love of _the_ truth.

They regard morals as derived from and subordinate to theology, and they

regulate all their statements, not by the standard of veracity, but by the

interests of their creed.

Another important moral consequence of the monastic system was the great

prominence given to pecuniary compensations for crime. It had been at

first one of the broad distinctions between Paganism and Christianity,

that, while the rites of the former were for the most part unconnected

with moral dispositions, Christianity made purity of heart an essential

element of all its worship. Among the Pagans a few faint efforts had, it

is true, been made in this direction. An old precept or law, which is

referred to by Cicero, and which was strongly reiterated by Apollonius of

Tyana, and the Pythagoreans, declared that “no impious man should dare to

appease the anger of the divinities by gifts;”(437) and oracles are said

to have more than once proclaimed that the hecatombs of noble oxen with

gilded horns that were offered up ostentatiously by the rich, were less

pleasing to the gods than the wreaths of flowers and the modest and

reverential worship of the poor.(438) In general, however, in the Pagan

world, the service of the temple had little or no connection with morals,

and the change which Christianity effected in this respect was one of its

most important benefits to mankind. It was natural, however, and perhaps

inevitable, that in the course of time, and under the action of very

various causes, the old Pagan sentiment should revive, and even with an

increased intensity. In no respect had the Christians been more nobly

distinguished than by their charity. It was not surprising that the

Fathers, while exerting all their eloquence to stimulate this

virtue—especially during the calamities that accompanied the dissolution

of the Empire—should have dilated in extremely strong terms upon the

spiritual benefits the donor would receive for his gift. It is also not

surprising that this selfish calculation should gradually, and among hard

and ignorant men, have absorbed all other motives. A curious legend, which

is related by a writer of the seventh century, illustrates the kind of

feeling that had arisen. The Christian bishop Synesius succeeded in

converting a Pagan named Evagrius, who for a long time, however, felt

doubts about the passage, “He who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord.”

On his conversion, and in obedience to this verse, he gave Synesius three

hundred pieces of gold to be distributed among the poor; but he exacted

from the bishop, as the representative of Christ, a promissory note,

engaging that he should be repaid in the future world. Many years later,

Evagrius, being on his death-bed, commanded his sons, when they buried

him, to place the note in his hand, and to do so without informing

Synesius. His dying injunction was observed, and three days afterwards he

appeared to Synesius in a dream, told him that the debt had been paid, and

ordered him to go to the tomb, where he would find a written receipt.

Synesius did as he was commanded, and, the grave being opened, the

promissory note was found in the hand of the dead man, with an endorsement

declaring that the debt had been paid by Christ. The note, it was said,

was long after preserved as a relic in the church of Cyrene.

The kind of feeling which this legend displays was soon turned with

tenfold force into the channel of monastic life. A law of Constantine

accorded, and several later laws enlarged, the power of bequests to

ecclesiastics. Ecclesiastical property was at the same time exonerated

from the public burdens, and this measure not only directly assisted its

increase, but had also an important indirect influence; for, when taxation

was heavy, many laymen ceded the ownership of their estates to the

monasteries, with a secret condition that they should, as vassals, receive

the revenues unburdened by taxation, and subject only to a slight payment

to the monks as to their feudal lords.(439) The monks were regarded as the

trustees of the poor, and also as themselves typical poor, and all the

promises that applied to those who gave to the poor applied, it was said,

to the benefactors of the monasteries. The monastic chapel also contained

the relics of saints or sacred images of miraculous power, and throngs of

worshippers were attracted by the miracles, and desired to place

themselves under the protection, of the saint. It is no exaggeration to

say that to give money to the priests was for several centuries the first

article of the moral code. Political minds may have felt the importance of

aggrandising a pacific and industrious class in the centre of a

disorganised society, and family affection may have predisposed many in

favour of institutions which contained at least one member of most

families; but in the overwhelming majority of cases the motive was simple

superstition. In seasons of sickness, of danger, of sorrow, or of remorse,

whenever the fear or the conscience of the worshipper was awakened, he

hastened to purchase with money the favour of a saint. Above all, in the

hour of death, when the terrors of the future world loomed darkly upon his

mind, he saw in a gift or legacy to the monks a sure means of effacing the

most monstrous crimes, and securing his ultimate happiness. A rich man was

soon scarcely deemed a Christian if he did not leave a portion of his

property to the Church, and the charters of innumerable monasteries in

every part of Europe attest the vast tracts of land that were ceded by

will to the monks, “for the benefit of the soul” of the testator.(440)

It has been observed by a great historian that we may trace three distinct

phases in the early history of the Church. In the first period religion

was a question of morals; in the second period, which culminated in the

fifth century, it had become a question of orthodoxy; in the third period,

which dates from the seventh century, it was a question of munificence to

monasteries.(441) The despotism of Catholicism, and the ignorance that

followed the barbarian invasions, had repressed the struggles of heresy,

and in the period of almost absolute darkness that continued from the

sixth to the twelfth century, the theological ideal of unquestioning faith

and of perfect unanimity was all but realised in the West. All the energy

that in previous ages had been expended in combating heresy was now

expended in acquiring wealth. The people compounded for the most atrocious

crimes by gifts to shrines of those saints whose intercession was supposed

to be unfailing. The monks, partly by the natural cessation of their old

enthusiasm, partly by the absence of any hostile criticism of their acts,

and partly too by the very wealth they had acquired, sank into gross and

general immorality. The great majority of them had probably at no time

been either saints actuated by a strong religious motive, nor yet diseased

and desponding minds seeking a refuge from the world; they had been simply

peasants, of no extraordinary devotion or sensitiveness, who preferred an

ensured subsistence, with no care, little labour, a much higher social

position than they could otherwise acquire, and the certainty, as they

believed, of going to heaven, to the laborious and precarious existence of

the serf, relieved, indeed, by the privilege of marriage, but exposed to

military service, to extreme hardships, and to constant oppression. Very

naturally, when they could do so with impunity, they broke their vows of

chastity. Very naturally, too, they availed themselves to the full of the

condition of affairs, to draw as much wealth as possible into their

community.(442) The belief in the approaching end of the world, especially

at the close of the tenth century, the crusades, which gave rise to a

profitable traffic in the form of a pecuniary commutation of vows, and the

black death, which produced a paroxysm of religious fanaticism, stimulated

the movement. In the monkish chronicles, the merits of sovereigns are

almost exclusively judged by their bounty to the Church, and in some cases

this is the sole part of their policy which has been preserved.(443)

There were, no doubt, a few redeeming points in this dark period. The

Irish monks are said to have been honourably distinguished for their

reluctance to accept the lavish donations of their admirers,(444) and some

missionary monasteries of a high order of excellence were scattered

through Europe. A few legends, too, may be cited censuring the facility

with which money acquired by crime was accepted as an atonement for

crime.(445) But these cases were very rare, and the religious history of

several centuries is little more than a history of the rapacity of priests

and of the credulity of laymen. In England, the perpetual demands of the

Pope excited a fierce resentment; and we may trace with remarkable

clearness, in every page of Matthew Paris, the alienation of sympathy

arising from this cause, which prepared and foreshadowed the final rupture

of England from the Church. Ireland, on the other hand, had been given

over by two Popes to the English invader, on the condition of the payment

of Peter’s pence. The outrageous and notorious immorality of the

monasteries, during the century before the Reformation, was chiefly due to

their great wealth; and that immorality, as the writings of Erasmus and

Ulric von Hutten show, gave a powerful impulse to the new movement, while

the abuses of the indulgences were the immediate cause of the revolt of

Luther. But these things arrived only after many centuries of successful

fraud. The religious terrorism that was unscrupulously employed had done

its work, and the chief riches of Christendom had passed into the coffers

of the Church.

It is, indeed, probable that religious terrorism played a more important

part in the monastic phase of Christianity than it had done even in the

great work of the conversion of the Pagans. Although two or three amiable

theologians had made faint and altogether abortive attempts to question

the eternity of punishment; although there had been some slight difference

of opinion concerning the future of some Pagan philosophers who had lived

before the introduction of Christianity, and also upon the question

whether infants who died unbaptised were only deprived of all joy, or were

actually subjected to never-ending agony, there was no question as to the

main features of the Catholic doctrine. According to the patristic

theologians, it was part of the gospel revelation that the misery and

suffering the human race endures upon earth is but a feeble image of that

which awaits it in the future world; that all its members beyond the

Church, as well as a very large proportion of those who are within its

pale, are doomed to an eternity of agony in a literal and undying fire.

The monastic legends took up this doctrine, which in itself is

sufficiently revolting, and they developed it with an appalling vividness

and minuteness. St. Macarius, it is said, when walking one day through the

desert, saw a skull upon the ground. He struck it with his staff and it

began to speak. It told him that it was the skull of a Pagan priest who

had lived before the introduction of Christianity into the world, and who

had accordingly been doomed to hell. As high as the heaven is above the

earth, so high does the fire of hell mount in waves above the souls that

are plunged into it. The damned souls were pressed together back to back,

and the lost priest made it his single entreaty to the saint that he would

pray that they might be turned face to face, for he believed that the

sight of a brother’s face might afford him some faint consolation in the

eternity of agony that was before him.(446) The story is well known of how

St. Gregory, seeing on a bas-relief a representation of the goodness of

Trajan to a poor widow, pitied the Pagan emperor, whom he knew to be in

hell, and prayed that he might be released. He was told that his prayer

was altogether unprecedented; but at last, on his promising that he would

never offer such a prayer again, it was partially granted. Trajan was not

withdrawn from hell, but he was freed from the torments which the

remainder of the Pagan world endured.(447)

An entire literature of visions depicting the torments of hell was soon

produced by the industry of the monks. The apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus,

which purported to describe the descent of Christ into the lower world,

contributed to foster it; and St. Gregory the Great has related many

visions in a more famous work, which professed to be compiled with

scrupulous veracity from the most authentic sources,(448) and of which it

may be confidently averred that it scarcely contains a single page which

is not tainted with grotesque and deliberate falsehood. Men, it was said,

passed into a trance or temporary death, and were then carried for a time

to hell. Among others, a certain man named Stephen, from whose lips the

saint declares that he had heard the tale, had died by mistake. When his

soul was borne to the gates of hell, the Judge declared that it was

another Stephen who was wanted; the disembodied spirit, after inspecting

hell, was restored to its former body, and the next day it was known that

another Stephen had died.(449) Volcanoes were the portals of hell, and a

hermit had seen the soul of the Arian emperor Theodoric, as St. Eucherius

afterwards did the soul of Charles Martel, carried down that in the Island

of Lipari.(450) The craters in Sicily, it was remarked, were continually

agitated, and continually increasing, and this, as St. Gregory observes,

was probably due to the impending ruin of the world, when the great press

of lost souls would render it necessary to enlarge the approaches to their

prisons.(451)

But the glimpses of hell that are furnished in the “Dialogues” of St.

Gregory appear meagre and unimaginative, compared with those of some later

monks. A long series of monastic visions, of which that of St. Fursey, in

the seventh century, was one of the first, and which followed in rapid

succession, till that of Tundale, in the twelfth century, professed to

describe with the most detailed accuracy the condition of the lost.(452)

It is impossible to conceive more ghastly, grotesque, and material

conceptions of the future world than they evince, or more hideous

calumnies against that Being who was supposed to inflict upon His

creatures such unspeakable misery. The devil was represented bound by

red-hot chains, on a burning gridiron in the centre of hell. The screams

of his never-ending agony made its rafters to resound; but his hands were

free, and with these he seized the lost souls, crushed them like grapes

against his teeth, and then drew them by his breath down the fiery cavern

of his throat. Dæmons with hooks of red-hot iron plunged souls alternately

into fire and ice. Some of the lost were hung up by their tongues, others

were sawn asunder, others gnawed by serpents, others beaten together on an

anvil and welded into a single mass, others boiled and then strained

through a cloth, others twined in the embraces of dæmons whose limbs were

of flame. The fire of earth, it was said, was but a picture of that of

hell. The latter was so immeasurably more intense that it alone could be

called real. Sulphur was mixed with it, partly to increase its heat, and

partly, too, in order that an insufferable stench might be added to the

misery of the lost, while, unlike other flames, it emitted, according to

some visions, no light, that the horror of darkness might be added to the

horror of pain. A narrow bridge spanned the abyss, and from it the souls

of sinners were plunged into the darkness that was below.(453)

Such catalogues of horrors, though they now awake in an educated man a

sentiment of mingled disgust, weariness, and contempt, were able for many

centuries to create a degree of panic and of misery we can scarcely

realise. With the exception of the heretic Pelagius, whose noble genius,

anticipating the discoveries of modern science, had repudiated the

theological notion of death having been introduced into the world on

account of the act of Adam, it was universally held among Christians that

all the forms of suffering and dissolution that are manifested on earth

were penal inflictions. The destruction of the world was generally

believed to be at hand. The minds of men were filled with images of the

approaching catastrophe, and innumerable legends of visible dæmons were

industriously circulated. It was the custom then, as it is the custom now,

for Catholic priests to stain the imaginations of young children by

ghastly pictures of future misery, to imprint upon the virgin mind

atrocious images which they hoped, not unreasonably, might prove

indelible.(454) In hours of weakness and of sickness their overwrought

fancy seemed to see hideous beings hovering around, and hell itself

yawning to receive its victim. St. Gregory describes how a monk, who,

though apparently a man of exemplary and even saintly piety, had been

accustomed secretly to eat meat, saw on his deathbed a fearful dragon

twining its tail round his body, and, with open jaws, sucking his

breath;(455) and how a little boy of five years old, who had learnt from

his father to repeat blasphemous words, saw, as he lay dying, exulting

dæmons who were waiting to carry him to hell.(456) To the jaundiced eye of

the theologian, all nature seemed stricken and forlorn, and its brightness

and beauty suggested no ideas but those of deception and of sin. The

redbreast, according to one popular legend, was commissioned by the Deity

to carry a drop of water to the souls of unbaptised infants in hell, and

its breast was singed in piercing the flames.(457) In the calm, still hour

of evening, when the peasant boy asked why the sinking sun, as it dipped

beneath the horizon, flushed with such a glorious red, he was answered, in

the words of an old Saxon catechism, because it is then looking into

hell.(458)

It is related in the vision of Tundale, that as he gazed upon the burning

plains of hell, and listened to the screams of ceaseless and hopeless

agony that were wrung from the sufferers, the cry broke from his lips,

“Alas, Lord! what truth is there in what I have so often heard—the earth

is filled with the mercy of God?”(459) It is, indeed, one of the most

curious things in moral history, to observe how men who were sincerely

indignant with Pagan writers for attributing to their divinities the

frailties of an occasional jealousy or an occasional sensuality—for

representing them, in a word, like men of mingled characters and

passions—have nevertheless unscrupulously attributed to their own Divinity

a degree of cruelty which may be confidently said to transcend the utmost

barbarity of which human nature is capable. Neither Nero nor Phalaris

could have looked complacently for ever on millions enduring the torture

of fire—most of them because of a crime which was committed, not by

themselves, but by their ancestors, or because they had adopted some

mistaken conclusion on intricate questions of history or metaphysics.(460)

To those who do not regard such teaching as true, it must appear without

exception the most odious in the religious history of the world,

subversive of the very foundations of morals, and well fitted to transform

the man who at once realised it, and accepted it with pleasure, into a

monster of barbarity. Of the writers of the mediæval period, certainly one

of the two or three most eminent was Peter Lombard, whose “Sentences,”

though now, I believe, but little read, were for a long time the basis of

all theological literature in Europe. More than four thousand theologians

are said to have written commentaries upon them(461)—among others, Albert

the Great, St. Bonaventura, and St. Thomas Aquinas. Nor is the work

unworthy of its former reputation. Calm, clear, logical, subtle, and

concise, the author professes to expound the whole system of Catholic

theology and ethics, and to reveal the interdependence of their various

parts. Having explained the position and the duties, he proceeds to

examine the prospects, of man. He maintains that until the day of judgment

the inhabitants of heaven and hell will continually see one another; but

that, in the succeeding eternity, the inhabitants of heaven alone will see

those of the opposite world; and he concludes his great work by this most

impressive passage: “In the last place, we must enquire whether the sight

of the punishment of the condemned will impair the glory of the blest, or

whether it will augment their beatitude. Concerning this, Gregory says the

sight of the punishment of the lost will not obscure the beatitude of the

just; for when it is accompanied by no compassion it can be no diminution

of happiness. And although their own joys might suffice to the just, yet

to their greater glory they will see the pains of the evil, which by grace

they have escaped.... The elect will go forth, not indeed locally, but by

intelligence, and by a clear vision, to behold the torture of the impious,

and as they see them they will not grieve. Their minds will be sated with

joy as they gaze on the unspeakable anguish of the impious, returning

thanks for their own freedom. Thus Esaias, describing the torments of the

impious, and the joy of the righteous in witnessing it, says: ‘The elect

in truth will go out and will see the corpses of men who have prevaricated

against Him; their worm will not die, and they will be to the satiety of

vision to all flesh, that is to the elect. The just man will rejoice when

he shall see the vengeance.’ ”(462)

This passion for visions of heaven and hell was, in fact, a natural

continuation of the passion for dogmatic definition, which had raged

during the fifth century. It was natural that men, whose curiosity had

left no conceivable question of theology undefined, should have

endeavoured to describe with corresponding precision the condition of the

dead. Much, however, was due to the hallucinations of solitary and ascetic

life, and much more to deliberate imposture. It is impossible for men to

continue long in a condition of extreme panic, and superstition speedily

discovered remedies to allay the fears it had created. If a malicious

dæmon was hovering around the believer, and if the jaws of hell were

opening to receive him, he was defended, on the other hand, by countless

angels; a lavish gift to a church or monastery could always enlist a saint

in his behalf, and priestly power could protect him against the dangers

which priestly sagacity had revealed. When the angels were weighing the

good and evil deeds of a dead man, the latter were found by far to

preponderate; but a priest of St. Lawrence came in, and turned the scale

by throwing down among the former a heavy gold chalice, which the deceased

had given to the altar.(463) Dagobert was snatched from the very arms of

dæmons by St. Denis, St. Maurice, and St. Martin.(464) Charlemagne was

saved, because the monasteries he had built outweighed his evil

deeds.(465) Others, who died in mortal sin, were raised from the dead at

the desire of their patron saint, to expiate their guilt. To amass relics,

to acquire the patronage of saints, to endow monasteries, to build

churches, became the chief part of religion, and the more the terrors of

the unseen world were unfolded, the more men sought tranquillity by the

consolations of superstition.(466)

The extent to which the custom of materialising religion was carried, can

only be adequately realised by those who have examined the mediæval

literature itself. That which strikes a student in perusing this

literature, is not so much the existence of these superstitions, as their

extraordinary multiplication, the many thousands of grotesque miracles

wrought by saints, monasteries, or relics, that were deliberately asserted

and universally believed. Christianity had assumed a form that was quite

as polytheistic and quite as idolatrous as the ancient Paganism. The low

level of intellectual cultivation, the religious feelings of

half-converted barbarians, the interests of the clergy, the great social

importance of the monasteries, and perhaps also the custom of compounding

for nearly all crimes by pecuniary fines, which was so general in the

penal system of the barbarian tribes, combined in their different ways,

with the panic created by the fear of hell, in driving men in the same

direction, and the wealth and power of the clergy rose to a point that

enabled them to overshadow all other classes. They had found, as has been

well said, in another world, the standing-point of Archimedes from which

they could move this. No other system had ever appeared so admirably

fitted to endure for ever. The Church had crushed or silenced every

opponent in Christendom. It had an absolute control over education in all

its branches and in all its stages. It had absorbed all the speculative

knowledge and art of Europe. It possessed or commanded wealth, rank, and

military power. It had so directed its teaching, that everything which

terrified or distressed mankind drove men speedily into its arms, and it

had covered Europe with a vast network of institutions, admirably adapted

to extend and perpetuate its power. In addition to all this, it had

guarded with consummate skill all the approaches to its citadel. Every

doubt was branded as a sin, and a long course of doubt must necessarily

have preceded the rejection of its tenets. All the avenues of enquiry were

painted with images of appalling suffering, and of malicious dæmons. No

sooner did the worshipper begin to question any article of faith, or to

lose his confidence in the virtue of the ceremonies of his Church, than he

was threatened with a doom that no human heroism could brave, that no

imagination could contemplate undismayed.

Of all the suffering that was undergone by those brave men who in ages of

ignorance and superstition dared to break loose from the trammels of their

Church, and who laid the foundation of the liberty we now enjoy, it is

this which was probably the most poignant, and which is the least

realised. Our imaginations can reproduce with much vividness gigantic

massacres like those of the Albigenses or of St. Bartholomew. We can

conceive, too, the tortures of the rack and of the boots, the dungeon, the

scaffold, and the slow fire. We can estimate, though less perfectly, the

anguish which the bold enquirer must have undergone from the desertion of

those he most dearly loved, from the hatred of mankind, from the malignant

calumnies that were heaped upon his name. But in the chamber of his own

soul, in the hours of his solitary meditation, he must have found elements

of a suffering that was still more acute. Taught from his earliest

childhood to regard the abandonment of his hereditary opinions as the most

deadly of crimes, and to ascribe it to the instigation of deceiving

dæmons, persuaded that if he died in a condition of doubt he must pass

into a state of everlasting torture, his imagination saturated with images

of the most hideous and appalling anguish, he found himself alone in the

world, struggling with his difficulties and his doubts. There existed no

rival sect in which he could take refuge, and where, in the professed

agreement of many minds, he could forget the anathemas of the Church.

Physical science, that has disproved the theological theories which

attribute death to human sin, and suffering to Divine vengeance, and all

natural phenomena to isolated acts of Divine intervention—historical

criticism, which has dispelled so many imposing fabrics of belief, traced

so many elaborate superstitions to the normal action of the undisciplined

imagination, and explained and defined the successive phases of religious

progress, were both unknown. Every comet that blazed in the sky, every

pestilence that swept over the land, appeared a confirmation of the dark

threats of the theologian. A spirit of blind and abject credulity,

inculcated as the first of duties, and exhibited on all subjects and in

all forms, pervaded the atmosphere he breathed. Who can estimate aright

the obstacles against which a sincere enquirer in such an age must have

struggled? Who can conceive the secret anguish he must have endured in the

long months or years during which rival arguments gained an alternate sway

over his judgment, while all doubt was still regarded as damnable? And

even when his mind was convinced, his imagination would still often revert

to his old belief. Our thoughts in after years flow spontaneously, and

even unconsciously, in the channels that are formed in youth. In moments

when the controlling judgment has relaxed its grasp, old intellectual

habits reassume their sway, and images painted on the imagination will

live, when the intellectual propositions on which they rested have been

wholly abandoned. In hours of weakness, of sickness, and of drowsiness, in

the feverish and anxious moments that are known to all, when the mind

floats passively upon the stream, the phantoms which reason had exorcised

must have often reappeared, and the bitterness of an ancient tyranny must

have entered into his soul.

It is one of the greatest of the many services that were rendered to

mankind by the Troubadours, that they cast such a flood of ridicule upon

the visions of hell, by which the monks had been accustomed to terrify

mankind, that they completely discredited and almost suppressed them.(467)

Whether, however, the Catholic mind, if unassisted by the literature of

Paganism and by the independent thinkers who grew up under the shelter of

Mohammedanism, could have ever unwound the chains that had bound it, may

well be questioned. The growth of towns, which multiplied secular

interests and feelings, the revival of learning, the depression of the

ecclesiastical classes that followed the crusades, and, at last, the

dislocation of Christendom by the Reformation, gradually impaired the

ecclesiastical doctrine, which ceased to be realised before it ceased to

be believed. There was, however, another doctrine which exercised a still

greater influence in augmenting the riches of the clergy, and in making

donations to the Church the chief part of religion. I allude, of course,

to the doctrine of purgatory.

A distinguished modern apologist for the middle ages has made this

doctrine the object of his special and very characteristic eulogy,

because, as he says, by providing a finite punishment graduated to every

variety of guilt, and adapted for those who, without being sufficiently

virtuous to pass at once into heaven, did not appear sufficiently vicious

to pass into hell, it formed an indispensable corrective to the extreme

terrorism of the doctrine of eternal punishment.(468) This is one of those

theories which, though exceedingly popular with a class of writers who are

not without influence in our day, must appear, I think, almost grotesque

to those who have examined the actual operation of the doctrine during the

middle ages. According to the practical teaching of the Church, the

expiatory powers at the disposal of its clergy were so great, that those

who died believing its doctrines, and fortified in their last hours by its

rites, had no cause whatever to dread the terrors of hell. On the other

hand, those who died external to the Church had no prospect of entering

into purgatory. This latter was designed altogether for true believers; it

was chiefly preached at a time when no one was in the least disposed to

question the powers of the Church to absolve any crime, however heinous,

or to free the worst men from hell, and it was assuredly never regarded in

the light of a consolation. Indeed, the popular pictures of purgatory were

so terrific that it may be doubted whether the imagination could ever

fully realise, though the reason could easily recognise, the difference

between this state and that of the lost. The fire of purgatory, according

to the most eminent theologians, was like the fire of hell—a literal fire,

prolonged, it was sometimes said, for ages. The declamations of the pulpit

described the sufferings of the saved souls in purgatory as incalculably

greater than any that were endured by the most wretched mortals upon

earth.(469) The rude artists of mediævalism exhausted their efforts in

depicting the writhings of the dead in the flames that encircled them.

Innumerable visions detailed with a ghastly minuteness the various kinds

of torture they underwent,(470) and the monk, who described what he

professed to have seen, usually ended by the characteristic moral, that

could men only realise those sufferings, they would shrink from no

sacrifice to rescue their friends from such a state. A special place, it

was said, was reserved in purgatory for those who had been slow in paying

their tithes.(471) St. Gregory tells a curious story of a man who was, in

other respects, of admirable virtue; but who, in a contested election for

the popedom, supported the wrong candidate, and without, as it would

appear, in any degree refusing to obey the successful candidate when

elected, continued secretly of opinion that the choice was an unwise one.

He was accordingly placed for some time after death in boiling water.(472)

Whatever may be thought of its other aspects, it is impossible to avoid

recognising in this teaching a masterly skill in the adaptation of means

to ends, which almost rises to artistic beauty. A system which deputed its

minister to go to the unhappy widow in the first dark hour of her anguish

and her desolation, to tell her that he who was dearer to her than all the

world besides was now burning in a fire, and that he could only be

relieved by a gift of money to the priests, was assuredly of its own kind

not without an extraordinary merit.

If we attempt to realise the moral condition of the society of Western

Europe in the period that elapsed between the downfall of the Roman Empire

and Charlemagne, during which the religious transformations I have noticed

chiefly arose, we shall be met by some formidable difficulties. In the

first place, our materials are very scanty. From the year A.D. 642, when

the meagre chronicle of Fredigarius closes, to the biography of

Charlemagne by Eginhard, a century later, there is an almost complete

blank in trustworthy history, and we are reduced to a few scanty and very

doubtful notices in the chronicles of monasteries, the lives of saints,

and the decrees of Councils. All secular literature had almost

disappeared, and the thought of posterity seems to have vanished from the

world.(473) Of the first half of the seventh century, however, and of the

two centuries that preceded it, we have much information from Gregory of

Tours, and Fredigarius, whose tedious and repulsive pages illustrate with

considerable clearness the conflict of races and the dislocation of

governments that for centuries existed. In Italy, the traditions and

habits of the old Empire had in some degree reasserted their sway; but in

Gaul the Church subsisted in the midst of barbarians, whose native vigour

had never been emasculated by civilisation and refined by knowledge. The

picture which Gregory of Tours gives us is that of a society which was

almost absolutely anarchical. The mind is fatigued by the monotonous

account of acts of violence and of fraud springing from no fixed policy,

tending to no end, leaving no lasting impress upon the world.(474) The two

queens Frédégonde and Brunehaut rise conspicuous above other figures for

their fierce and undaunted ambition, for the fascination they exercised

over the minds of multitudes, and for the number and atrocity of their

crimes. All classes seem to have been almost equally tainted with vice. We

read of a bishop named Cautinus, who had to be carried, when intoxicated,

by four men from the table;(475) who, upon the refusal of one of his

priests to surrender some private property, deliberately ordered that

priest to be buried alive, and who, when the victim, escaping by a happy

chance from the sepulchre in which he had been immured, revealed the

crime, received no greater punishment than a censure.(476) The worst

sovereigns found flatterers or agents in ecclesiastics. Frédégonde deputed

two clerks to murder Childebert,(477) and another clerk to murder

Brunehaut;(478) she caused a bishop of Rouen to be assassinated at the

altar—a bishop and an archdeacon being her accomplices;(479) and she found

in another bishop, named Ægidius, one of her most devoted instruments and

friends.(480) The pope, St. Gregory the Great, was an ardent flatterer of

Brunehaut.(481) Gundebald, having murdered his three brothers, was

consoled by St. Avitus, the bishop of Vienne, who, without intimating the

slightest disapprobation of the act, assured him that by removing his

rivals he had been a providential agent in preserving the happiness of his

people.(482) The bishoprics were filled by men of notorious debauchery, or

by grasping misers.(483) The priests sometimes celebrated the sacred

mysteries “gorged with food and dull with wine.”(484) They had already

begun to carry arms, and Gregory tells of two bishops of the sixth century

who had killed many enemies with their own hands.(485) There was scarcely

a reign that was not marked by some atrocious domestic tragedy. There were

few sovereigns who were not guilty of at least one deliberate murder.

Never, perhaps, was the infliction of mutilation, and prolonged and

agonising forms of death, more common. We read, among other atrocities, of

a bishop being driven to a distant place of exile upon a bed of

thorns;(486) of a king burning together his rebellious son, his

daughter-in-law, and their daughters;(487) of a queen condemning a

daughter she had had by a former marriage to be drowned, lest her beauty

should excite the passions of her husband;(488) of another queen

endeavouring to strangle her daughter with her own hands;(489) of an

abbot, compelling a poor man to abandon his house, that he might commit

adultery with his wife, and being murdered, together with his partner, in

the act;(490) of a prince who made it an habitual amusement to torture his

slaves with fire, and who buried two of them alive, because they had

married without his permission;(491) of a bishop’s wife, who, besides

other crimes, was accustomed to mutilate men and to torture women, by

applying red-hot irons to the most sensitive parts of their bodies;(492)

of great numbers who were deprived of their ears and noses, tortured

through several days, and at last burnt alive or broken slowly on the

wheel. Brunehaut, at the close of her long and in some respects great

though guilty career, fell into the hands of Clotaire, and the old queen,

having been subjected for three days to various kinds of torture, was led

out on a camel for the derision of the army, and at last bound to the tail

of a furious horse, and dashed to pieces in its course.(493)

And yet this age was, in a certain sense, eminently religious. All

literature had become sacred. Heresy of every kind was rapidly expiring.

The priests and monks had acquired enormous power, and their wealth was

inordinately increasing.(494) Several sovereigns voluntarily abandoned

their thrones for the monastic life.(495) The seventh century, which,

together with the eighth, forms the darkest period of the dark ages, is

famous in the hagiology as having produced more saints than any other

century, except that of the martyrs.(496)

The manner in which events were regarded by historians was also

exceedingly characteristic. Our principal authority, Gregory of Tours, was

a bishop of great eminence, and a man of the most genuine piety, and of

very strong affections.(497) He describes his work as a record “of the

virtues of saints, and the disasters of nations;”(498) and the student who

turns to his pages from those of the Pagan historians, is not more struck

by the extreme prominence he gives to ecclesiastical events, than by the

uniform manner in which he views all secular events in their religious

aspect, as governed and directed by a special Providence. Yet, in

questions where the difference between orthodoxy and heterodoxy is

concerned, his ethics sometimes exhibit the most singular distortion. Of

this, probably the most impressive example is the manner in which he has

described the career of Clovis, the great representative of

orthodoxy.(499) Having recounted the circumstances of his conversion,

Gregory proceeds to tell us, with undisguised admiration, how that

chieftain, as the first-fruits of his doctrine, professed to be grieved at

seeing that part of Gaul was held by an Arian sovereign; how he

accordingly resolved to invade and appropriate that territory; how, with

admirable piety, he commanded his soldiers to abstain from all

devastations when traversing the territory of St. Martin, and how several

miracles attested the Divine approbation of the expedition. The war—which

is the first of the long series of professedly religious wars that have

been undertaken by Christians—was fully successful, and Clovis proceeded

to direct his ambition to new fields. In his expedition against the

Arians, he had found a faithful ally in his relative Sighebert, the old

and infirm king of the Ripuarian Franks. Clovis now proceeded artfully to

suggest to the son of Sighebert the advantages that son might obtain by

his father’s death. The hint was taken. Sighebert was murdered, and Clovis

sent ambassadors to the parricide, professing a warm friendship, but with

secret orders on the first opportunity to kill him. This being done, and

the kingdom being left entirely without a head, Clovis proceeded to

Cologne, the capital of Sighebert; he assembled the people, professed with

much solemnity his horror of the tragedies that had taken place, and his

complete innocence of all connection with them;(500) but suggested that,

as they were now without a ruler, they should place themselves under his

protection. The proposition was received with acclamation. The warriors

elected him as their king, and thus, says the episcopal historian, “Clovis

received the treasures and dominions of Sighebert, and added them to his

own. Every day God caused his enemies to fall beneath his hand, and

enlarged his kingdom, because he walked with a right heart before the

Lord, and did the things that were pleasing in His sight.”(501) His

ambition was, however, still unsated. He proceeded, in a succession of

expeditions, to unite the whole of Gaul under his sceptre, invading,

defeating, capturing, and slaying the lawful sovereigns, who were for the

most part his own relations. Having secured himself against dangers from

without, by killing all his relations, with the exception of his wife and

children, he is reported to have lamented before his courtiers his

isolation, declaring that he had no relations remaining in the world to

assist him in his adversity; but this speech, Gregory assures us, was a

stratagem; for the king desired to discover whether any possible pretender

to the throne had escaped his knowledge and his sword. Soon after, he

died, full of years and honours, and was buried in a cathedral which he

had built.

Having recounted all these things with unmoved composure, Gregory of Tours

requests his reader to permit him to pause, to draw the moral of the

history. It is the admirable manner in which Providence guides all things

for the benefit of those whose opinions concerning the Trinity are

strictly orthodox. Having briefly referred to Abraham, Jacob, Moses,

Aaron, and David, all of whom are said to have intimated the correct

doctrine on this subject, and all of whom were exceedingly prosperous, he

passes to more modern times. “Arius, the impious founder of the impious

sect, his entrails having fallen out, passed into the flames of hell; but

Hilary, the blessed defender of the undivided Trinity, though exiled on

that account, found his country in Paradise. The King Clovis, who

confessed the Trinity, and by its assistance crushed the heretics,

extended his dominions through all Gaul. Alaric, who denied the Trinity,

was deprived of his kingdom and his subjects, and, what was far worse, was

punished in the future world.”(502)

It would be easy to cite other, though perhaps not quite such striking,

instances of the degree in which the moral judgments of this unhappy age

were distorted by superstition.(503) Questions of orthodoxy, or questions

of fasting, appeared to the popular mind immeasurably more important than

what we should now call the fundamental principles of right and wrong. A

law of Charlemagne, and also a law of the Saxons, condemned to death any

one who ate meat in Lent,(504) unless the priest was satisfied that it was

a matter of absolute necessity. The moral enthusiasm of the age chiefly

drove men to abandon their civic or domestic duties, to immure themselves

in monasteries, and to waste their strength by prolonged and extravagant

maceration.(505) Yet, in the midst of all this superstition, there can be

no question that in some respects the religious agencies were operating

for good. The monastic bodies that everywhere arose, formed secure asylums

for the multitudes who had been persecuted by their enemies, constituted

an invaluable counterpoise to the rude military forces of the time,

familiarised the imagination of men with religious types that could hardly

fail in some degree to soften the character, and led the way in most forms

of peaceful labour. When men, filled with admiration at the reports of the

sanctity and the miracles of some illustrious saint, made pilgrimages to

behold him, and found him attired in the rude garb of a peasant, with

thick shoes, and with a scythe on his shoulder, superintending the labours

of the farmers,(506) or sitting in a small attic mending lamps,(507)

whatever other benefit they might derive from the interview, they could

scarcely fail to return with an increased sense of the dignity of labour.

It was probably at this time as much for the benefit of the world as of

the Church, that the ecclesiastical sanctuaries and estates should remain

inviolate, and the numerous legends of Divine punishment having overtaken

those who transgressed them,(508) attest the zeal with which the clergy

sought to establish that inviolability. The great sanctity that was

attached to holidays was also an important boon to the servile classes.

The celebration of the first day of the week, in commemoration of the

resurrection, and as a period of religious exercises, dates from the

earliest age of the Church. The Christian festival was carefully

distinguished from the Jewish Sabbath, with which it never appears to have

been confounded till the close of the sixteenth century; but some Jewish

converts, who considered the Jewish law to be still in force, observed

both days. In general, however, the Christian festival alone was observed,

and the Jewish Sabbatical obligation, as St. Paul most explicitly affirms,

no longer rested upon the Christians. The grounds of the observance of

Sunday were the manifest propriety and expediency of devoting a certain

portion of time to devout exercises, the tradition which traced the

sanctification of Sunday to apostolic times, and the right of the Church

to appoint certain seasons to be kept holy by its members. When

Christianity acquired an ascendancy in the Empire, its policy on this

subject was manifested in one of the laws of Constantine, which, without

making any direct reference to religious motives, ordered that, “on the

day of the sun,” no servile work should be performed except agriculture,

which, being dependent on the weather, could not, it was thought, be

reasonably postponed. Theodosius took a step further, and suppressed the

public spectacles on that day. During the centuries that immediately

followed the dissolution of the Roman Empire, the clergy devoted

themselves with great and praiseworthy zeal to the suppression of labour

both on Sundays and on the other leading Church holidays. More than one

law was made, forbidding all Sunday labour, and this prohibition was

reiterated by Charlemagne in his Capitularies.(509) Several Councils made

decrees on the subject,(510) and several legends were circulated, of men

who had been afflicted miraculously with disease or with death, for having

been guilty of this sin.(511) Although the moral side of religion was

greatly degraded or forgotten, there was, as I have already intimated, one

important exception. Charity was so interwoven with the superstitious

parts of ecclesiastical teaching, that it continued to grow and nourish in

the darkest period. Of the acts of Queen Bathilda, it is said we know

nothing except her donations to the monasteries, and the charity with

which she purchased slaves and captives, and released them or converted

them into monks.(512) While many of the bishops were men of gross and

scandalous vice, there were always some who laboured assiduously in the

old episcopal vocation of protecting the oppressed, interceding for the

captives, and opening their sanctuaries to the fugitives. St. Germanus, a

bishop of Paris, near the close of the sixth century, was especially

famous for his zeal in ransoming captives.(513) The fame he acquired was

so great, that prisoners are said to have called upon him to assist them,

in the interval between his death and his burial; and the body of the

saint becoming miraculously heavy, it was found impossible to carry it to

the grave till the captives had been released.(514) In the midst of the

complete eclipse of all secular learning, in the midst of a reign of

ignorance, imposture, and credulity which cannot be paralleled in history,

there grew up a vast legendary literature, clustering around the form of

the ascetic; and the lives of the saints, among very much that is

grotesque, childish, and even immoral, contain some fragments of the

purest and most touching religious poetry.(515)

But the chief title of the period we are considering, to the indulgence of

posterity, lies in its missionary labours. The stream of missionaries

which had at first flowed from Palestine and Italy began to flow from the

West. The Irish monasteries furnished the earliest, and probably the most

numerous, labourers in the field. A great portion of the north of England

was converted by the Irish monks of Lindisfarne. The fame of St.

Columbanus in Gaul, in Germany, and in Italy, for a time even balanced

that of St. Benedict himself, and the school which he founded at Luxeuil

became the great seminary for mediæval missionaries, while the monastery

he planted at Bobbio continued to the present century. The Irish

missionary, St. Gall, gave his name to a portion of Switzerland he had

converted, and a crowd of other Irish missionaries penetrated to the

remotest forests of Germany. The movement which began with St. Columba in

the middle of the sixth century, was communicated to England and Gaul

about a century later. Early in the eighth century it found a great leader

in the Anglo-Saxon St. Boniface, who spread Christianity far and wide

through Germany, and at once excited and disciplined an ardent enthusiasm,

which appears to have attracted all that was morally best in the Church.

During about three centuries, and while Europe had sunk into the most

extreme moral, intellectual, and political degradation, a constant stream

of missionaries poured forth from the monasteries, who spread the

knowledge of the Cross and the seeds of a future civilisation through

every land, from Lombardy to Sweden.(516)

On the whole, however, it would be difficult to exaggerate the

superstition and the vice of the period between the dissolution of the

Empire and the reign of Charlemagne. But in the midst of the chaos the

elements of a new society may be detected, and we may already observe in

embryo the movement which ultimately issued in the crusades, the feudal

system, and chivalry. It is exclusively with the moral aspect of this

movement that the present work is concerned, and I shall endeavour, in the

remainder of this chapter, to describe and explain its incipient stages.

It consisted of two parts—a fusion of Christianity with the military

spirit, and an increasing reverence for secular rank.

It had been an ancient maxim of the Greeks, that no more acceptable gifts

can be offered in the temples of the gods, than the trophies won from an

enemy in battle.(517) Of this military religion Christianity had been at

first the extreme negation. I have already had occasion to observe that it

had been one of its earliest rules that no arms should be introduced

within the church, and that soldiers returning even from the most

righteous war should not be admitted to communion until after a period of

penance and purification. A powerful party, which counted among its

leaders Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius, and Basil,

maintained that all warfare was unlawful for those who had been converted;

and this opinion had its martyr in the celebrated Maximilianus, who

suffered death under Diocletian solely because, having been enrolled as a

soldier, he declared that he was a Christian, and that therefore he could

not fight. The extent to which this doctrine was disseminated has been

suggested with much plausibility as one of the causes of the Diocletian

persecution.(518) It was the subject of one of the reproaches of Celsus;

and Origen, in reply, frankly accepted the accusation that Christianity

was incompatible with military service, though he maintained that the

prayers of the Christians were more efficacious than the swords of the

legions.(519) At the same time, there can be no question that many

Christians, from a very early date, did enlist in the army, and that they

were not cut off from the Church. The legend of the thundering legion,

under Marcus Aurelius, whatever we may think of the pretended miracle,

attested the fact, and it is expressly asserted by Tertullian.(520) The

first fury of the Diocletian persecution fell upon Christian soldiers, and

by the time of Constantine the army appears to have become, in a great

degree, Christian. A Council of Arles, under Constantine, condemned

soldiers who, through religious motives, deserted their colours; and St.

Augustine threw his great influence into the same scale. But even where

the calling was not regarded as sinful, it was strongly discouraged. The

ideal or type of supreme excellence conceived by the imagination of the

Pagan world and to which all their purest moral enthusiasm naturally

aspired, was the patriot and soldier. The ideal of the Catholic legends

was the ascetic, whose first duty was to abandon all secular feelings and

ties. In most family circles the conflict between the two principles

appeared, and in the moral atmosphere of the fourth and fifth centuries it

was almost certain that every young man who was animated by any pure or

genuine enthusiasm would turn from the army to the monks. St. Martin, St.

Ferreol, St. Tarrachus, and St. Victricius, were among those who through

religious motives abandoned the army.(521) When Ulphilas translated the

Bible into Gothic, he is said to have excepted the four books of Kings,

through fear that they might encourage the martial disposition of the

barbarians.(522)

The first influence that contributed to bring the military profession into

friendly connection with religion was the received doctrine concerning the

Providential government of affairs. It was generally taught that all

national catastrophes were penal inflictions, resulting, for the most

part, from the vices or the religious errors of the leading men, and that

temporal prosperity was the reward of orthodoxy and virtue. A great

battle, on the issue of which the fortunes of a people or of a monarch

depended, was therefore supposed to be the special occasion of

Providential interposition, and the hope of obtaining military success

became one of the most frequent motives of conversion. The conversion of

Constantine was professedly, and the conversion of Clovis was perhaps

really, due to the persuasion that the Divine interposition had in a

critical moment given them the victory; and I have already noticed how

large a part must be assigned to this order of ideas in facilitating the

progress of Christianity among the barbarians. When a cross was said to

have appeared miraculously to Constantine, with an inscription announcing

the victory of the Milvian bridge; when the same holy sign, adorned with

the sacred monogram, was carried in the forefront of the Roman armies;

when the nails of the cross, which Helena had brought from Jerusalem, were

converted by the emperor into a helmet, and into bits for his war-horse,

it was evident that a great change was passing over the once pacific

spirit of the Church.(523)

Many circumstances conspired to accelerate it. Northern tribes, who had

been taught that the gates of the Walhalla were ever open to the warrior

who presented himself stained with the blood of his vanquished enemies,

were converted to Christianity; but they carried their old feelings into

their new creed. The conflict of many races, and the paralysis of all

government that followed the fall of the Empire, made force everywhere

dominant, and petty wars incessant. The military obligations attached to

the “benefices” which the sovereigns gave to their leading chiefs,

connected the idea of military service with that of rank still more

closely than it had been connected before, and rendered it doubly

honourable in the eyes of men. Many bishops and abbots, partly from the

turbulence of their times and characters, and partly, at a later period,

from their position as great feudal lords, were accustomed to lead their

followers in battle; and this custom, though prohibited by Charlemagne,

may be traced to so late a period as the battle of Agincourt.(524)

The stigma which Christianity had attached to war was thus gradually

effaced. At the same time, the Church remained, on the whole, a pacific

influence. War was rather condoned than consecrated, and, whatever might

be the case with a few isolated prelates, the Church did nothing to

increase or encourage it. The transition from the almost Quaker tenets of

the primitive Church to the essentially military Christianity of the

Crusades was chiefly due to another cause—to the terrors and to the

example of Mohammedanism.

This great religion, which so long rivalled the influence of Christianity,

had indeed spread the deepest and most justifiable panic through

Christendom. Without any of those aids to the imagination which pictures

and images can furnish, without any elaborate sacerdotal organisation,

preaching the purest Monotheism among ignorant and barbarous men, and

inculcating, on the whole, an extremely high and noble system of morals,

it spread with a rapidity and it acquired a hold over the minds of its

votaries, which it is probable that no other religion has altogether

equalled. It borrowed from Christianity that doctrine of salvation by

belief, which is perhaps the most powerful impulse that can be applied to

the characters of masses of men, and it elaborated so minutely the charms

of its sensual heaven, and the terrors of its material hell, as to cause

the alternative to appeal with unrivalled force to the gross imaginations

of the people. It possessed a book which, however inferior to that of the

opposing religion, has nevertheless been the consolation and the support

of millions in many ages. It taught a fatalism which in its first age

nerved its adherents with a matchless military courage, and which, though

in later days it has often paralysed their active energies, has also

rarely failed to support them under the pressure of inevitable calamity.

But, above all, it discovered the great, the fatal secret of uniting

indissolubly the passion of the soldier with the passion of the devotee.

Making the conquest of the infidel the first of duties, and proposing

heaven as the certain reward of the valiant soldier, it created a blended

enthusiasm that soon overpowered the divided counsels and the voluptuous

governments of the East, and, within a century of the death of Mohammed,

his followers had almost extirpated Christianity from its original home,

founded great monarchies in Asia and Africa, planted a noble, though

transient and exotic, civilisation in Spain, menaced the capital of the

Eastern empire, and, but for the issue of a single battle, they would

probably have extended their sceptre over the energetic and progressive

races of Central Europe. The wave was broken by Charles Martel, at the

battle of Poitiers, and it is now useless to speculate what might have

been the consequences had Mohammedanism unfurled its triumphant banner

among those Teutonic tribes who have so often changed their creed, and on

whom the course of civilisation has so largely depended. But one great

change was in fact achieved. The spirit of Mohammedanism slowly passed

into Christianity, and transformed it into its image. The spectacle of an

essentially military religion fascinated men who were at once very warlike

and very superstitious. The panic that had palsied Europe was after a long

interval succeeded by a fierce reaction of resentment. Pride and religion

conspired to urge the Christian warriors against those who had so often

defeated the armies and wasted the territory of Christendom, who had shorn

the empire of the Cross of many of its fairest provinces, and profaned

that holy city which was venerated not only for its past associations, but

also for the spiritual blessings it could still bestow upon the pilgrim.

The papal indulgences proved not less efficacious in stimulating the

military spirit than the promises of Mohammed, and for about two centuries

every pulpit in Christendom proclaimed the duty of war with the

unbeliever, and represented the battle-field as the sure path to heaven.

The religious orders which arose united the character of the priest with

that of the warrior, and when, at the hour of sunset, the soldier knelt

down to pray before his cross, that cross was the handle of his sword.

It would be impossible to conceive a more complete transformation than

Christianity had thus undergone, and it is melancholy to contrast with its

aspect during the crusades the impression it had once most justly made

upon the world, as the spirit of gentleness and of peace encountering the

spirit of violence and war. Among the many curious habits of the Pagan

Irish, one of the most significant was that of perpendicular burial. With

a feeling something like that which induced Vespasian to declare that a

Roman emperor should die standing, the Pagan warriors shrank from the

notion of being prostrate even in death, and they appear to have regarded

this martial burial as a special symbol of Paganism. An old Irish

manuscript tells how, when Christianity had been introduced into Ireland,

a king of Ulster on his deathbed charged his son never to become a

Christian, but to be buried standing upright like a man in battle, with

his face for ever turned to the south, defying the men of Leinster.(525)

As late as the sixteenth century, it is said that in some parts of Ireland

children were baptised by immersion; but the right arms of the males were

carefully held above the water, in order that, not having been dipped in

the sacred stream, they might strike the more deadly blow.(526)

It had been boldly predicted by some of the early Christians that the

conversion of the world would lead to the establishment of perpetual

peace. In looking back, with our present experience, we are driven to the

melancholy conclusion that, instead of diminishing the number of wars,

ecclesiastical influence has actually and very seriously increased it. We

may look in vain for any period since Constantine, in which the clergy, as

a body, exerted themselves to repress the military spirit, or to prevent

or abridge a particular war, with an energy at all comparable to that

which they displayed in stimulating the fanaticism of the crusaders, in

producing the atrocious massacre of the Albigenses, in embittering the

religious contests that followed the Reformation. Private wars were, no

doubt, in some degree repressed by their influence; for the institution of

the “Truce of God” was for a time of much value, and when, towards the

close of the middle ages, the custom of duels arose, it was strenuously

condemned by the clergy; but we can hardly place any great value on their

exertions in this field, when we remember that duels were almost or

altogether unknown to the Pagan world; that, having arisen in a period of

great superstition, the anathemas of the Church were almost impotent to

discourage them; and that in our own century they are rapidly disappearing

before the simple censure of an industrial society. It is possible—though

it would, I imagine, be difficult to prove it—that the mediatorial office,

so often exercised by bishops, may sometimes have prevented wars; and it

is certain that during the period of the religious wars, so much military

spirit existed in Europe that it must necessarily have found a vent, and

under no circumstances could the period have been one of perfect peace.

But when all these qualifications have been fully admitted, the broad fact

will remain, that, with the exception of Mohammedanism, no other religion

has done so much to produce war as was done by the religious teachers of

Christendom during several centuries. The military fanaticism evoked by

the indulgences of the popes, by the exhortations of the pulpit, by the

religious importance attached to the relics at Jerusalem, and by the

prevailing hatred of misbelievers, has scarcely ever been equalled in its

intensity, and it has caused the effusion of oceans of blood, and has been

productive of incalculable misery to the world. Religious fanaticism was a

main cause of the earlier wars, and an important ingredient in the later

ones. The peace principles, that were so common before Constantine, have

found scarcely any echo except from Erasmus, the Anabaptists, and the

Quakers;(527) and although some very important pacific agencies have

arisen out of the industrial progress of modern times, these have been,

for the most part, wholly unconnected with, and have in some cases been

directly opposed to, theological interests.

But although theological influences cannot reasonably be said to have

diminished the number of wars, they have had a very real and beneficial

effect in diminishing their atrocity. On few subjects have the moral

opinions of different ages exhibited so marked a variation as in their

judgments of what punishment may justly be imposed on a conquered enemy,

and these variations have often been cited as an argument against those

who believe in the existence of natural moral perceptions. To those,

however, who accept that doctrine, with the limitations that have been

stated in the first chapter, they can cause no perplexity. In the first

dawning of the human intelligence (as I have said) the notion of duty, as

distinguished from that of interest, appears, and the mind, in reviewing

the various emotions by which it is influenced, recognises the unselfish

and benevolent motives as essentially and generically superior to the

selfish and the cruel. But it is the general condition of society alone

that determines the standard of benevolence—the classes towards which

every good man will exercise it. At first, the range of duty is the

family, the tribe, the state, the confederation. Within these limits every

man feels himself under moral obligations to those about him; but he

regards the outer world as we regard wild animals, as beings upon whom he

may justifiably prey. Hence, we may explain the curious fact that the

terms brigand or corsair conveyed in the early stages of society no notion

of moral guilt.(528) Such men were looked upon simply as we look upon

huntsmen, and if they displayed courage and skill in their pursuit, they

were deemed fit subjects for admiration. Even in the writings of the most

enlightened philosophers of Greece, war with barbarians is represented as

a form of chase, and the simple desire of obtaining the barbarians as

slaves was considered a sufficient reason for invading them. The right of

the conqueror to kill his captives was generally recognised, nor was it at

first restricted by any considerations of age or sex. Several instances

are recorded of Greek and other cities being deliberately destroyed by

Greeks or by Romans, and the entire populations ruthlessly massacred.(529)

The whole career of the early republic of Rome, though much idealised and

transfigured by later historians, was probably governed by these

principles.(530) The normal fate of the captive, which, among barbarians,

had been death, was, in civilised antiquity, slavery; but many thousands

were condemned to the gladiatorial shows, and the vanquished general was

commonly slain in the Mamertine prison, while his conqueror ascended in

triumph to the Capitol.

A few traces of a more humane spirit may, it is true, be discovered. Plato

had advocated the liberation of all Greek prisoners upon payment of a

fixed ransom,(531) and the Spartan general Callicratidas had nobly acted

upon this principle;(532) but his example never appears to have been

generally followed. In Rome, the notion of international obligation was

very strongly felt. No war was considered just which had not been

officially declared; and even in the case of wars with barbarians, the

Roman historians often discuss the sufficiency or insufficiency of the

motives, with a conscientious severity a modern historian could hardly

surpass.(533) The later Greek and Latin writings occasionally contain

maxims which exhibit a considerable progress in this sphere. The sole

legitimate object of war, both Cicero and Sallust declared to be an

assured peace. That war, according to Tacitus, ends well which ends with a

pardon. Pliny refused to apply the epithet great to Cæsar, on account of

the torrents of human blood he had shed. Two Roman conquerors(534) are

credited with the saying that it is better to save the life of one citizen

than to destroy a thousand enemies. Marcus Aurelius mournfully assimilated

the career of a conqueror to that of a simple robber. Nations or armies

which voluntarily submitted to Rome were habitually treated with great

leniency, and numerous acts of individual magnanimity are recorded. The

violation of the chastity of conquered women by soldiers in a siege was

denounced as a rare and atrocious crime.(535) The extreme atrocities of

ancient war appear at last to have been practically, though not legally,

restricted to two classes.(536) Cities where Roman ambassadors had been

insulted, or where some special act of ill faith or cruelty had taken

place, were razed to the ground, and their populations massacred or

delivered into slavery. Barbarian prisoners were regarded almost as wild

beasts, and sent in thousands to fill the slave market or to combat in the

arena.

The changes Christianity effected in the rights of war were very

important, and they may, I think, be comprised under three heads. In the

first place, it suppressed the gladiatorial shows, and thereby saved

thousands of captives from a bloody death. In the next place, it steadily

discouraged the practice of enslaving prisoners, ransomed immense

multitudes with charitable contributions, and by slow and insensible

gradations proceeded on its path of mercy till it became a recognised

principle of international law, that no Christian prisoners should be

reduced to slavery.(537) In the third place, it had a more indirect but

very powerful influence by the creation of a new warlike ideal. The ideal

knight of the Crusades and of chivalry, uniting all the force and fire of

the ancient warrior, with something of the tenderness and humility of the

Christian saint, sprang from the conjunction of the two streams of

religious and of military feeling; and although this ideal, like all

others, was a creation of the imagination not often perfectly realised in

life, yet it remained the type and model of warlike excellence, to which

many generations aspired; and its softening influence may even now be

largely traced in the character of the modern gentleman.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Together with the gradual fusion of the military spirit with Christianity,

we may dimly descry, in the period before Charlemagne, the first stages of

that consecration of secular rank which at a later period, in the forms of

chivalry, the divine right of kings, and the reverence for aristocracies,

played so large a part both in moral and in political history.

We have already seen that the course of events in the Roman Empire had

been towards the continual aggrandisement of the imperial power. The

representative despotism of Augustus was at last succeeded by the oriental

despotism of Diocletian. The senate sank into a powerless assembly of

imperial nominees, and the spirit of Roman freedom wholly perished with

the extinction of Stoicism.

It would probably be a needless refinement to seek any deeper causes for

this change than may be found in the ordinary principles of human nature.

Despotism is the normal and legitimate government of an early society in

which knowledge has not yet developed the powers of the people; but when

it is introduced into a civilised community, it is of the nature of a

disease, and a disease which, unless it be checked, has a continual

tendency to spread. When free nations abdicate their political functions,

they gradually lose both the capacity and the desire for freedom.

Political talent and ambition, having no sphere for action, steadily

decay, and servile, enervating, and vicious habits proportionately

increase. Nations are organic beings in a constant process of expansion or

decay, and where they do not exhibit a progress of liberty they usually

exhibit a progress of servitude.

It can hardly be asserted that Christianity had much influence upon this

change. By accelerating in some degree that withdrawal of the virtuous

energies of the people from the sphere of government which had long been

in process, it prevented the great improvement of morals, which it

undoubtedly effected, from appearing perceptibly in public affairs. It

taught a doctrine of passive obedience, which its disciples nobly observed

in the worst periods of persecution. On the other hand, the Christians

emphatically repudiated the ascription of Divine honours to the sovereign,

and they asserted with heroic constancy their independent worship, in

defiance of the law. After the time of Constantine, however, their zeal

became far less pure, and sectarian interests wholly governed their

principles. Much misapplied learning has been employed in endeavouring to

extract from the Fathers a consistent doctrine concerning the relations of

subjects to their sovereigns; but every impartial observer may discover

that the principle upon which they acted was exceedingly simple. When a

sovereign was sufficiently orthodox in his opinions, and sufficiently

zealous in patronising the Church and in persecuting the heretics, he was

extolled as an angel. When his policy was opposed to the Church, he was

represented as a dæmon. The estimate which Gregory of Tours has given of

the character of Clovis, though far more frank, is not a more striking

instance of moral perversion than the fulsome and indeed blasphemous

adulation which Eusebius poured upon Constantine—a sovereign whose

character was at all times of the most mingled description, and who,

shortly after his conversion, put to a violent death his son, his nephew,

and his wife. If we were to estimate the attitude of ecclesiastics to

sovereigns by the language of Eusebius, we should suppose that they

ascribed to them a direct Divine inspiration, and exalted the Imperial

dignity to an extent that was before unknown.(538) But when Julian mounted

the throne, the whole aspect of the Church was changed. This great and

virtuous, though misguided sovereign, whose private life was a model of

purity, who carried to the throne the manners, tastes, and friendships of

a philosophic life, and who proclaimed and, with very slight exceptions,

acted with the largest and most generous toleration, was an enemy of the

Church, and all the vocabulary of invective was in consequence habitually

lavished upon him. Ecclesiastics and laymen combined in insulting him, and

when, after a brief but glorious reign of less than two years, he met an

honourable death on the battle-field, neither the disaster that had

befallen the Roman arms, nor the present dangers of the army, nor the

heroic courage which the fallen emperor had displayed, nor the majestic

tranquillity of his end, nor the tears of his faithful friends, could

shame the Christian community into the decency of silence. A peal of

brutal merriment filled the land. In Antioch the Christians assembled in

the theatres and in the churches, to celebrate with rejoicing the death

which their emperor had met in fighting against the enemies of his

country.(539) A crowd of vindictive legends expressed the exultation of

the Church,(540) and St. Gregory Nazianzen devoted his eloquence to

immortalising it. His brother had at one time been a high official in the

Empire, and had fearlessly owned his Christianity under Julian; but that

emperor not only did not remove him from his post, but even honoured him

with his warm friendship.(541) The body of Julian had been laid but a

short time in the grave, when St. Gregory delivered two fierce invectives

against his memory, collected the grotesque calumnies that had been heaped

upon his character, expressed a regret that his remains had not been flung

after death into the common sewer, and regaled the hearers by an emphatic

assertion of the tortures that were awaiting him in hell. Among the Pagans

a charge of the gravest kind was brought against the Christians. It was

said that Julian died by the spear, not of an enemy, but of one of his own

Christian soldiers. When we remember that he was at once an emperor and a

general, that he fell when bravely and confidently leading his army in the

field, and in the critical moment of a battle on which the fortunes of the

Empire largely depended, this charge, which Libanius has made, appears to

involve as large an amount of base treachery as any that can be conceived.

It was probably a perfectly groundless calumny; but the manner in which it

was regarded among the Christians is singularly characteristic.

“Libanius,” says one of the ecclesiastical historians, “clearly states

that the emperor fell by the hand of a Christian; and this, probably, was

the truth. It is not unlikely that some of the soldiers who then served in

the Roman army might have conceived the idea of acting like the ancient

slayers of tyrants who exposed themselves to death in the cause of

liberty, and fought in defence of their country, their families, and their

friends, and whose names are held in universal admiration. Still less is

he deserving of blame who, for the sake of God and of religion, performed

so bold a deed.”(542)

It may be asserted, I think, without exaggeration, that the complete

subordination of all other principles to their theological interests,

which characterised the ecclesiastics under Julian, continued for many

centuries. No language of invective was too extreme to be applied to a

sovereign who opposed their interests. No language of adulation was too

extravagant for a sovereign who sustained them. Of all the emperors who

disgraced the throne of Constantinople, the most odious and ferocious was

probably Phocas. An obscure centurion, he rose by a military revolt to the

supreme power, and the Emperor Maurice, with his family, fell into his

hands. He resolved to put the captive emperor to death; but, first of all,

he ordered his five children to be brought out and to be successively

murdered before the eyes of their father, who bore the awful sight with a

fine mixture of antique heroism and of Christian piety, murmuring, as each

child fell beneath the knife of the assassin, “Thou art just, O Lord, and

righteous are Thy judgments,” and even interposing, at the last moment, to

reveal the heroic fraud of the nurse who desired to save his youngest

child by substituting for it her own. But Maurice—who had been a weak and

avaricious rather than a vicious sovereign—had shown himself jealous of

the influence of the Pope, had forbidden the soldiers, during the extreme

danger of their country, deserting their colours to enrol themselves as

monks, and had even encouraged the pretensions of the Archbishop of

Constantinople to the title of Universal Bishop; and, in the eyes of the

Roman priests, the recollection of these crimes was sufficient to excuse

the most brutal of murders. In two letters, full of passages from

Scripture, and replete with fulsome and blasphemous flattery, the Pope,

St. Gregory the Great, wrote to congratulate Phocas and his wife upon

their triumph; he called heaven and earth to rejoice over them; he placed

their images to be venerated in the Lateran, and he adroitly insinuated

that it was impossible that, with their well-known piety, they could fail

to be very favourable to the See of Peter.(543)

The course of events in relation to the monarchical power was for some

time different in the East and the West. Constantine had himself assumed

more of the pomp and manner of an oriental sovereign than any preceding

emperor, and the court of Constantinople was soon characterised by an

extravagance of magnificence on the part of the monarch, and of adulation

on the part of the subjects, which has probably never been exceeded.(544)

The imperial power in the East overshadowed the ecclesiastical, and the

priests, notwithstanding their fierce outbreak during the iconoclastic

controversy, and a few minor paroxysms of revolt, gradually sank into that

contented subservience which has usually characterised the Eastern Church.

In the West, however, the Roman bishops were in a great degree independent

of the sovereigns, and in some degree opposed to their interests. The

transfer of the imperial power to Constantinople, by leaving the Roman

bishops the chief personages in a city which long association as well as

actual power rendered the foremost in the world, was one of the great

causes of the aggrandisement of the Papacy and the Arianism of many

sovereigns, the jealousy which others exhibited of ecclesiastical

encroachments, and the lukewarmness of a few in persecuting heretics, were

all causes of dissension. On the severance of the Empire, the Western

Church came in contact with rulers of another type. The barbarian kings

were little more than military chiefs, elected for the most part by the

people, surrounded by little or no special sanctity, and maintaining their

precarious and very restricted authority by their courage or their skill.

A few feebly imitated the pomp of the Roman emperors, but their claims had

no great weight with the world. The aureole which the genius of Theodoric

cast around his throne passed away upon his death, and the Arianism of

that great sovereign sufficiently debarred him from the sympathies of the

Church. In Gaul, under a few bold and unscrupulous men, the Merovingian

dynasty emerged from a host of petty kings, and consolidated the whole

country into one kingdom; but after a short period it degenerated, the

kings became mere puppets in the hands of the mayors of the palace, and

these latter, whose office had become hereditary, who were the chiefs of

the great landed proprietors, and who had acquired by their position a

personal ascendancy over the sovereigns, became the virtual rulers of the

nation.

It was out of these somewhat unpromising conditions that the mediæval

doctrine of the Divine right of kings, and the general reverence for rank,

that formed the essence of chivalry, were slowly evolved. Political and

moral causes conspired in producing them. The chief political causes—which

are well known—may be summed up in a few words.

When Leo the Isaurian attempted, in the eighth century, to repress the

worship of images, the resistance which he met at Constantinople, though

violent, was speedily allayed; but the Pope, assuming a far higher

position than any Byzantine ecclesiastic could attain, boldly

excommunicated the emperor, and led a revolt against his authority, which

resulted in the virtual independence of Italy. His position was at this

time singularly grand. He represented a religious cause to which the great

mass of the Christian world were passionately attached. He was venerated

as the emancipator of Italy. He exhibited in the hour of his triumph a

moderation which conciliated many enemies, and prevented the anarchy that

might naturally have been expected. He presided, at the same time, over a

vast monastic organisation, which ramified over all Christendom,

propagated his authority among many barbarous nations, and, by its special

attachment to the Papacy, as distinguished from the Episcopacy,

contributed very much to transform Christianity into a spiritual

despotism. One great danger, however, still menaced his power. The

barbarous Lombards were continually invading his territory, and

threatening the independence of Rome. The Lombard monarch, Luitprand had

quailed in the very hour of his triumph before the menace of eternal

torture but his successor, Astolphus, was proof against every fear, and it

seemed as though the Papal city must have inevitably succumbed before his

arms.

In their complete military impotence, the Popes looked abroad for some

foreign succour, and they naturally turned to the Franks, whose martial

tastes and triumphs were universally renowned. Charles Martel, though

simply a mayor of the palace, had saved Europe from the Mohammedans, and

the Pope expected that he would unsheath his sword for the defence of the

Vatican. Charles, however, was deaf to all entreaties; and, although he

had done more than any ruler since Constantine for the Church, his

attention seems to have been engrossed by the interests of his own

country, and he was much alienated from the sympathies of the clergy. An

ancient legend tells how a saint saw his soul carried by dæmons into hell,

because he had secularised Church property, and a more modern

historian(545) has ascribed his death to his having hesitated to defend

the Pope. His son, Pepin, however, actuated probably in different degrees

by personal ambition, a desire for military adventure, and religious zeal,

listened readily to the prayer of the Pope, and a compact was entered into

between the parties, which proved one of the most important events in

history. Pepin agreed to secure the Pope from the danger by which he was

threatened. The Pope agreed to give his religious sanction to the ambition

of Pepin, who designed to depose the Merovingian dynasty, and to become in

name, as he was already in fact, the sovereign of Gaul.

It is not necessary for me to recount at length the details of these

negotiations, which are described by many historians. It is sufficient to

say, that the compact was religiously observed. Pepin made two expeditions

to Italy, and completely shattered the power of the Lombards, wresting

from them the rich exarchate of Ravenna, which he ceded to the Pope, who

still retained his nominal allegiance to the Byzantine emperor, but who

became, by this donation, for the first time avowedly an independent

temporal prince. On the other hand, the deposition of Childeric was

peaceably effected; the last of the Merovingians was immured in a

monastery, and the Carlovingian dynasty ascended the throne under the

special benediction of the Pope, who performed on the occasion the

ceremony of consecration, which had not previously been in general

use,(546) placed the crown with his own hands on the head of Pepin, and

delivered a solemn anathema against all who should rebel against the new

king or against his successors.

The extreme importance of these events was probably not fully realised by

any of the parties concerned in them. It was evident, indeed, that the

Pope had been freed from a pressing danger, and had acquired a great

accession of temporal power, and also that a new dynasty had arisen in

Gaul under circumstances that were singularly favourable and imposing.

But, much more important than these facts was the permanent consecration

of the royal authority that had been effected. The Pope had successfully

asserted his power of deposing and elevating kings, and had thus acquired

a position which influenced the whole subsequent course of European

history. The monarch, if he had become in some degree subservient to the

priest, had become in a great degree independent of his people; the Divine

origin of his power was regarded as a dogma of religion, and a sanctity

surrounded him which immeasurably aggrandised his power. The ascription,

by the Pagans, of divinity to kings had had no appreciable effect in

increasing their authority or restraining the limits of criticism or of

rebellion. The ascription of a Divine right to kings, independent of the

wishes of the people, has been one of the most enduring and most potent of

superstitions, and it has even now not wholly vanished from the

world.(547)

Mere isolated political events have, however, rarely or never this

profound influence, unless they have been preceded and prepared by other

agencies. The first predisposing cause of the ready reception of the

doctrine of the Divine character of authority, may probably be found in

the prominence of the monastic system. I have already observed that this

system represents in its extreme form that exaltation of the virtues of

humility and of obedience which so broadly distinguishes the Christian

from the Pagan type of excellence. I have also noticed that, owing to the

concurrence of many causes, it had acquired such dimensions and influence

as to supply the guiding ideal of the Christian world. Controlling or

monopolising all education and literature, furnishing most of the

legislators and many of the statesmen of the age, attracting to themselves

all moral enthusiasm and most intellectual ability, the monks soon left

their impress on the character of nations. Habits of obedience and

dispositions of humility were diffused, revered, and idealised, and a

Church which rested mainly on tradition fostered a deep sense of the

sanctity of antiquity, and a natural disposition to observe traditional

customs. In this manner a tone of feeling was gradually formed that

assimilated with the monarchical and aristocratical institutions of

feudalism, which flourished chiefly because they corresponded with the

moral feelings of the time.

In the next place, a series of social and political causes diminished the

personal independence for which the barbarians had been noted. The king

had at first been, not the sovereign of a country, but the chief of a

tribe.(548) Gradually, however, with more settled habits, the sovereignty

assumed a territorial character, and we may soon discover the rudiments of

a territorial aristocracy. The kings gave their leading chiefs portions of

conquered land or of the royal domains, under the name of benefices. The

obligation of military service was attached to these benefices, and by

slow and perhaps insensible stages, each of which has been the subject of

fierce controversy, they were made irrevocable, and ultimately hereditary.

While society was still disorganised, small landlords purchased the

protection of the Church, or of some important chief, by surrendering

their estates, which they received back as tenants, subject to the

condition of the payment of rent, or of military service. Others, without

making such surrender, placed themselves under the care of a neighbouring

lord, and offered, in return, homage or military aid. At the same time,

through causes to which I have already adverted, the free peasants for the

most part sank into serfs, subject to and protected by the landowners. In

this manner a hierarchy of ranks was gradually formed, of which the

sovereign was the apex and the serf the basis. The complete legal

organisation of this hierarchy belongs to the period of feudalism, which

is not within the scope of the present volume; but the chief elements of

feudalism existed before Charlemagne, and the moral results flowing from

them may be already discerned. Each rank, except the very highest, was

continually brought into contact with a superior, and a feeling of

constant dependence and subordination was accordingly fostered. To the

serf, who depended for all things upon the neighbouring noble, to the

noble, who held all his dignities on the condition of frequent military

service under his sovereign, the idea of secular rank became indissolubly

connected with that of supreme greatness.

It will appear evident, from the foregoing observations, that in the

period before Charlemagne the moral and political causes were already in

action, which at a much later period produced the organisation of

chivalry—an organisation which was founded on the combination and the

glorification of secular rank and military prowess. But, in order that the

tendencies I have described should acquire their full force, it was

necessary that they should be represented or illustrated in some great

personage, who, by the splendour and the beauty of his career, could

fascinate the imaginations of men. It is much easier to govern great

masses of men through their imagination than through their reason. Moral

principles rarely act powerfully upon the world, except by way of example

or ideals. When the course of events has been to glorify the ascetic or

monarchical or military spirit, a great saint, or sovereign, or soldier

will arise, who will concentrate in one dazzling focus the blind

tendencies of his time, kindle the enthusiasm and fascinate the

imagination of the people. But for the prevailing tendency, the great man

would not have arisen, or would not have exercised his great influence.

But for the great man, whose career appealed vividly to the imagination,

the prevailing tendency would never have acquired its full intensity.

This typical figure appeared in Charlemagne, whose colossal form towers

with a majestic grandeur both in history and in romance. Of all the great

rulers of men, there has probably been no other who was so truly

many-sided, whose influence pervaded so completely all the religious,

intellectual, and political modes of thought existing in his time. Rising

in one of the darkest periods of European history, this great emperor

resuscitated, with a brief but dazzling splendour, the faded glories of

the Empire of the West, conducted, for the most part in person, numerous

expeditions against the barbarous nations around him, promulgated a vast

system of legislation, reformed the discipline of every order of the

Church, and reduced all classes of the clergy to subservience to his will,

while, by legalising tithes, he greatly increased their material

prosperity. He at the same time contributed, in a measure, to check the

intellectual decadence by founding schools and libraries, and drawing

around him all the scattered learning of Europe. He reformed the coinage,

extended commerce, influenced religious controversies, and convoked great

legislative assemblies, which ultimately contributed largely to the

organisation of feudalism. In all these spheres the traces of his vast,

organising, and far-seeing genius may be detected, and the influence which

he exercised over the imaginations of men is shown by the numerous legends

of which he is the hero. In the preceding ages the supreme ideal had been

the ascetic. When the popular imagination embodied in legends its

conception of humanity in its noblest and most attractive form, it

instinctively painted some hermit-saint of many penances and many

miracles. In the Romances of Charlemagne and of Arthur we may trace the

dawning of a new type of greatness. The hero of the imagination of Europe

was no longer a hermit, but a king, a warrior, a knight. The long train of

influences I have reviewed, culminating in Charlemagne, had done their

work. The age of the ascetics began to fade. The age of the crusades and

of chivalry succeeded it.

It is curious to observe the manner in which, under the influence of the

prevailing tendency, the career of Charlemagne was transfigured by the

popular imagination. His military enterprises had been chiefly directed

against the Saxons, against whom he had made not less than thirty-two

expeditions. With the Mohammedans he had but little contact. It was

Charles Martel, not his grandson, who, by the great battle of Poitiers,

had checked their career. Charlemagne made, in person, but a single

expedition against them in Spain, and that expedition was on a small

scale, and was disastrous in its issue. But in the Carlovingian romances,

which arose at a time when the enthusiasm of the Crusades was permeating

Christendom, events were represented in a wholly different light. Charles

Martel has no place among the ideal combatants of the Church. He had

appeared too early, his figure was not sufficiently great to fascinate the

popular imagination, and by confiscating ecclesiastical property, and

refusing to assist the Pope against the Lombards, he had fallen under the

ban of the clergy. Charlemagne, on the other hand, was represented as the

first and greatest of the crusaders. His wars with the Saxons were

scarcely noticed. His whole life was said to have been spent in heroic and

triumphant combats with the followers of Mohammed.(549) Among the

achievements attributed to him was an expedition to rescue Nismes and

Carcassonne from their grasp, which was, in fact, a dim tradition of the

victories of Charles Martel.(550) He is even said to have carried his

victorious arms into the heart of Palestine, and he is the hero of what

are probably the three earliest extant romances of the Crusades.(551) In

fiction, as in history, his reign forms the great landmark separating the

early period of the middle ages from the age of military Christianity.

On the verge of this great change I draw this history to a close. In

pursuing our long and chequered course, from Augustus to Charlemagne, we

have seen the rise and fall of many types of character, and of many forms

of enthusiasm. We have seen the influence of universal empire expanding,

and the influence of Greek civilisation intensifying, the sympathies of

Europe. We have surveyed the successive progress of Stoicism, Platonism,

and Egyptian philosophies, at once reflecting and guiding the moral

tendencies of society. We have traced the course of progress or

retrogression in many fields of social, political, and legislative life,

have watched the cradle of European Christianity, examined the causes of

its triumph, the difficulties it encountered, and the priceless blessings

its philanthropic spirit bestowed upon mankind. We have also pursued step

by step the mournful history of its corruption, its asceticism, and its

intolerance, the various transformations it produced or underwent when the

turbid waters of the barbarian invasions had inundated the civilisations

of Europe. It remains for me, before concluding this work, to investigate

one class of subjects to which I have, as yet, but briefly adverted—to

examine the effects of the changes I have described upon the character and

position of woman, and upon the grave moral questions concerning the

relations of the sexes.